That was a kind of weird thing to wrap your mind around, but it was a nice library. Maria sat on one of the tables, end of her shirt in hand, and was wiping off the grease and dust that had already accumalated on the blade. It was relativley clean, but she if she couldn't keep herself clean, then her blade would be clean. A slice of bread was sitting next to her, on top of a copy of The Man in the Iron Mask, and next to a half-finished bottle of water. Maybe she was burning though her supplies, but if she was at top condition all the time, then her chances of survival were far higher than if she only ate when she was starving to conserve food.

She had pulled out a book from the romance section, and it was lying on the floor for her to tear a page out. She helf it up with one hand, then carefully moved the blade at a positivley glacial pace. The blade sheered through the page without an inch of deviation or resistance, and she let out a slight whistle. If that had been muscle rather than paper... This was a surpsingly good weapon she'd managed to get. A gun would have been preferable as always but...

Jesus, how was she being so blase about this? She was litterally staring death in the face, and instead of crying or panicking or really doing anything one would expect, she was calmly cleaning the blade to stab death in the face. Was this normal? Did actual people do this? Were any others of her classmates settling down and getting ready for the storm that would no doubt arrive? Or was she being the crazy preparer of the bunch?

She picked up the book and set it standing up on the table where she had been sitting, before bringing the sword down again.

She was going to win this fucking thing, no matter how much she hated the idea of having to kill someone. She was going to win, she was going to go home, and she wasn't going to end up dead like the poor sod who had won a few seasons ago.

Irene was here. Irene, her crazy, over-the-top quite possibly undiagnosed ADD sporty-gamer friend with more quirks than... a very quirky thing was here, and suddenly Hannah didn't quite care enough about Olivia telling her to shut up to actually retort. She grinned from ear-to-ear and stepped in for a hug, only realisng her shotgun when she pressed up against it. "Oh shit, since when did you get that Johnny Three?" She giggled a bit, then pulled her in for a hug proper, glad to see a friend.

Irene was possibly one of Hannah's oldest friends. No scratch that, was her oldest friend. The two had met when Irene's father had invited a fellow floor manager in a casino to dinner, and not being able to secure a babysitter, Hannah had been taken along. It hadn't taken long for Irene to poke her head into the meeting, and the two had started a lifelong friendship there. When her parents had mooved to Kingsman, it was Irene's circle of friends that had been the most accepting people of her in the otherwise unknown city, and Irene had defended her after she had come out as openly Lesbian.

So, although Irene had been standing in the designated akwardness area^TM, fuck that noise and give me a hug sister, thought Hannah, because we sure as hell ain't gonna get many chances like this thanks to the bullshit we've found herself in. "I geuss it's slightly too late to get that hair dyed now?"

Rea had kissed him. That was good. The entire situation in which they found themselves in was not good, and he had just heard a rustling noise from next door. He gently pushed Rea away, put a finger to his lips, and took her revolver out of the bag. He looked straight down the barrel to see it it was loaded, a very stupid idea, but until he figured out how it worked, the best he had, and was relieved to see that it was. He slowly stood up, wiping the tears off of his face with his right hand, before switching the gun over. The door swung open, and he siltently padded out, indicating that Rea should stay where she was. If the other pereson wasn't friendly, then he could probably take him or her. She couldn't.

He flattened his back against the wall next to the door, and pressed the revolver's barrel against the wooden partition that seperated the two. "Hey, you alright in there?" It was about as stupid as a question could get, but it was the only thing he had in the circumstances. If they were someone he knew, Ben maybe, then they could have a group that haad a chance. Sure, the likelyhood was that any group would eventually be picked off, he remembered an article in a newpaper when he was younger talking about how there was this semi-famous ice skater who had gained a slowly-picked off entourage, but that group was big. Two or three people was perfect. Enough to spot and cover for eachother, not enough to cause infighting and be blatantly obvious whilst moving.

Hannah was breathing heavily, clutching the plank of wood like a massive club, both hands wrapped around the fabric handle. In-between her labored breaths, she heard another set of lungs breathing, and froze. There was somebody behind her, and she was largely helpless should they have anything better than a stick. Or, you know, have the muscle mass of a twelve-year-old. She whirled around and started into the eyes of whoever was behind her.

And breathed a sigh of relief. No weapons in their hands, and besides, she knew the girl. Not well, but she made a point to know everyone a little bit, so she knew that Olivia Fischer really wanted to be a watchmaker, was a big anime fan, and was also into robotics. She also had very brightly colored fingernails, which always made Hannah envious of her sloppily-painted rushjobs of fingernails that she barley did anyway because varnish tasted terrible when you bit your nails. Olivia was also a local to the area, although Hannah was pretty sure that her family of watchmakers had puttered around the Mojave long before the bright lights of Vegas had drawn in the Kendrickstones.

She sniffed and sat down again, placing the plant in-between her knees and looking up at the girl, a feat unto itself as Hannah was about six inches taller than Fischer. "We're fucked, you know that right? You, me, Wade, Irene, whoever you call friends..." She waved her hand feebly as if to offer an apology, before continuing. "All the kids who would be fine in the real world. Not too rich, but not going to be poor. We're the cannon fodder for this FUCKING GAME!" She screamed the last two words, trying to convey immeasurable anger in them. It was pretty impressive if she said so herself, but she continued.

"The poor kids who have had to claw their way to where we are, they're used to fighting. Maybe not with axes and guns and spears, but they've been fighting for a long time. The rich kids are just that. Rich. They get through this because they're above all this shit.. They could be the perfect snipers, like '*pew,* another oik gone!'"

"So that's fucking it. we're dead and done for. Fucked completely and utterly by being thrown in an environment that we were never supposed to survive in..." She tapped the plank against the floor, creating steady percussion that echoed throughout the entire cave, bouncing off of the walls and reflecting and bouncing again and reflecting until the sound was absorbed by the dark, mossy rock.

"It's a kind of misogynistic comedy if you think about it. It's literally a guy 'taming' a woman to be the perfect bride, hence the n..." She paused. Did he just say Charity and the gang? From Rough House? (and Subrban Jungle in general, but whatever, it was the furry webcomic which she occasionally-checked-but-was-never-serious-about? So he was a furry! She was inwardly fist pumping at her brilliant sleuth-like deductions, before realising she had trailed off mid sentence.

She cleared her throat and continued, trying to play off her sudden record scratch in her chat. "Sorry, needed to clear my throat. Yeah, hence the name. Quite controversial, so I've got mixed feelings about if I really want to be Katerina, the bride. Don't get me wrong, I'm not some jackbooted feminazi, but it is a little over the top."

She picked an invisible peice of fluff off of her t-shirt, a 3/4 baseball top with "all outta bubblegum" on it that she'd picked up online for a ridiculously low price and not-so-subtley changed topic. "You like Rough House? Ever read Dan and Mab? There is a surprisingly large amount of backstory to that thing that you only get outside of universe."

Well, she'd planted the bait, now it was time to see if he would pick it up. Perhaps he would change the topic and shy away, (hidden pun! Horses shy away!) or maybe he would pick up the ball and run with it. She was surprised it had taken this long for any of this to come out, so she was hoping the latter.

"You guys head to the belltower then. If I hear the bell, I'll come running, don't worry about that." Maria gave a little salute before turning. The asylum beckoned, providing a tiny measure of saftey, whilst still allowing her to hear the bell. Then again, if the bell was rung, the whole bloody island would probably hear it. She shrugged her shoulders and started off in the direction of the building. "If I don't hear the bell, then at least I can tell your families that I was willing to help."

Shakespeare, William. For a library, there really wasn't much of selection when it came to Shakespear. Sure, there was Macbeth, Hamlet, even Twelth Night, but no Julius Ceaser? No All's Well? No freakin' Merchants of Venice? Still, they had Taming of the Shrew for some bizarre reason, and that was what she needed. Saved her a trip, and the hassle of digging out one of the many library cards that accumulated in drawers when you didn't count them.

It was quiet in the library. Sure, that seemed like a bit of a dumb thing to say, but it was quiter than usual. Perhaps those who made the most noise also ate the most. It was lunchtime after all. She was probably the only girl who cared about this thing for Shakespear anymore, hell, probably the only girl who cared about the library for reading books. She'd seen borderline fights break out in between the bookshelves.

Like, seriously, what was that kid doing? What was the point of going to the library, only to stare at a bloody laptop screen the entire time? She went closer. Maybe it was justifiable and he was writing something and cross referencing a book, or maybe he had just come to a place to quietly game.

She realised it was Wade stupidly late. She was ninety-nine percent sure he was a furry, but the topic had never come up in the chats they'd had. She walked closer and jostled his hair, before sitting down on the desk where he was working, all thoughts of the sanctity of the library forgotten.

"Wade!" She whispered loudly, "what're you working on today?" Cartwright was a bit of a spacer, and probably one of the only people who could match her love for literature punch for punch, so it'd seemed natural when they'd become friends. What was he doing in the library though? He was more a fan of writing stories than reading them, and he didn't have a book out, so the only logical explanation would be his webcomics. Time to find out if her hunch was right.

First times were never great to be perfectly frank. Neither partner really knew the other's body, it was awkward, and sometimes painful. But, despite this, it was sex. Not amazing mind-blowing sex, but pretty decent for the first time. They had literally years to get to the mind-blowing stuff (assuming the relationship would last that long,) but yeah.

The light filtered in through his curtains, making him curse the fact that he'd procrastinated on getting blackout-curtains for the umpteenth time. Fumbling, he reached around for his watch, and nearly did a double-take. 10:13. He had somehow slept through his own internal alarm system, the light coming in, and quite possibly his relations coming home.

He was about to shift his other arm and step out of the bed, when he realised that it was numb from being trapped underneath Rea. He couldn't lift it up and out without waking her, so instead he shifted his position to a more comfortable one and lightly stroked her hair back behind her ear.

Mr. Graham had had his head blown out and she would be following him. She wasn't stupid; she knew that a girl like her had no chance in SOTF. She wasn't the strongest, the fastest, the cleverest, the one with the most stamina, the most resistant to change...

She was a wannabe actor who just wanted to read and perform. What had she done that was so wrong to deserve this punishment? Why had Cochise, a backwater college in a state that nobody cared about targeted?

She was never going to see her mother or father again. Never going to pick up Marcus and swing him around like he loved, never going to see her cat, Archie, never going to have a girlfriend, never going to... Never going to do anything more with her life than what she'd done.

There was nothing that she could do to prevent her imminent demise. She hadn't even gotten a good weapon, just a towel wrapped around a plank of wood to stop her hand from getting splinters. If she had gotten a gun, then maybe she could've done something, but she was destined to become another victim. Another candle at a vigil.

She was sitting down inside one of the dinghies, sodden wood making the bottom of her jeans wet, but right now, it was the least of her concerns. She picked up the end of her scarf not wrapped around her face, and used it to dab away the tears that had been falling for god knows how long.

Her hoodie had shifted, revealing the stupid temporary tattoo that she had put on there a few days ago. She and Irene had been joking around, and her brother had had some tucked away in a drawer, so she had ended up with a snake wrapped around her wrist.

As she thought about this, another wave of tears hit her, and she buried her head in her hands. It wasn't just her, was it? All her friends, casual buddies, fellow furries, all of them who had come on the trip would be here as well, wouldn't they? Everyone who had come on this stupid trip would be stuck here with a command to kill and a collar, wouldn't they?

Her nails, bitten short, hadn't even scratched the paint on the horrible thing. The weight and the size left her in no doubt that it would easily blow her neck to peices, perhaps even destroy her chin whilst it was at it.

She stood up and picked up her 'weapon,' She had gone through her bag, the board that was to be her weapon on the boat where she had just sat. Screaming, she brought the weapon down onto the boat, sending splinters flying out. Bringing it up, she slammed it down again, and again and again until she had tired herself out; and then some, until her breathing was ragged and her arm muscles already exhausted.

They seemed friendly, so Maria edged closer, one hand on her blade incase anybody decided that they'd want to actually attack her. She looked at the other girl, knowing her face was...

Fuck. It was Isabel.

The most malicious, stuck up bitch of a 'woman' that Cochise had ever had the misfortune of being stuck with. The girl who she constantly made a very pointed effort to ignore, and in response got rumours whispered behind her back.

The one about her being a junkie was bullshit, and everyone knew it. Even Bradley admitted that she'd never taken anything stronger than ectasy, and, at least when it came to drug consumption, people tended to trust Bradley, no matter how large of a pukestain he was on grounds.

But her circulating that she was some kind of... God she didn't even want to acknowledge the goddamn word. She admitted that her tendencies to go through boyfriends very fast, in no small part because she was simultaneously studious and party-like, and tended to throw too much into the pot too early, what that girl had insinuated was utter bullshit, yet had stuck.

She approached, glaring at Isabel, but otherwise not bothering to acknowledge her. Maybe this, she considered, was why SOTF ended in blood. High school rivalries supercharged with a lack of law and lethal weaponry...

But no. She wasn't going to just attack Isabel. She was pathetic and refused to talk to her face, but if she somehow picked up enough courage to attack her she would respond in kind.

Clarise had said something. Something about the belltower and ringing it to get attention. "There's a problem with that though. All the crazies who want to play will also come, and if just one or two people start fighting, then everyone will start defending themselves. Y'know, how the anti-gun argument goes that if one person pulls out a gun to stop a shooter and starts firing, he becomes the shooter?"

"Surely we'd need to come up with a little more subtle way than just inviting everyone to the tower, right?"

Numb yet crying. Was that an oxymoron? A contradiction in terms? Or was it the inevitable consequence of being put into the situation that he found himself in even now? Whatever it was, he supposed, he wouldn't be dying alone.

He'd be dying with another person who really didn't deserve to die. Fuckin' A. His shoulder was getting soaked through from Rea's tears, but he didn't object, watching as the droplets of his own eyes dropped down and splashed into his trousers, the carpet, anything.

Carefully, he pulled Rea's bag over towards him, intending on sharing the load a bit more evenly. He unzipped it and looked through it, finding the same supplies that he had, except for one difference. His eyes widened as she saw the gun, but for now he left it in there, instead pulling out an energy bar and unwrapping it for her.

"Maybe we don't have to fight?" He muttered. The overwhelming part of his brain knew that it was bullshit, five times this had gone ahead, and not once did the result end in anything but a single survivor. "There can't be too many islands with an infrastructure like this, right?"

Maybes the government would be searching for they already, preicing together the locations the terrorists were releasing in order to find the location. Maybe his or her family had hired investigators to do the same. They were both rich, right?

Or maybe, the cynical part of his brain whispered, you're in denial. 'You know that you're going to have to kill or be killed and you're too pathetic to accept it. You wanted to be a soldier, so make up your mind Willy boy!'

Jesus Christ the run had winded her, and it hadn't even been that far. She was too on-edge, her stomach was churning, and the sword kept on smacking against her thigh as she ran. She could smell the sea, the salty, bring smell that she had experienced so often, gone deep beneath over fifty times... Maria could handle the sea. If it wasn't for the collar she would have tried going for it, taking her chances and heading out for another island, but if she tried that, then her head would become salsa sauce and that didn't sound like her ideal goal.

As she neared the cliffs though, she saw that there was already a little party going on. The same size, infact as the one she had fled from, but since it didn't look like anyone was shooting, and it was far more open, she could go with it. She actually recognised them as well. Well, two of them.

Clarice was pretty cool. Had defended her from Bradley once, which had permanently put her in Maria's good books, and she knew that her and Conrad were a thing. Kinda. She was never sure how far they'd taken the relationship. The other girl was genuinely a mystery to her.

She left the blade inside its makeshift sheath, and put her hand in the air in greeting, shortly followed by a 'Hey guys' as she drew nearer. Conrad had... Whatever the fuck that weapon was. A halberd? Something like that. She didn't know what the other two had, but neither of them looked as if they were packing, so there was that.

Time to see if this would be another vomit-including clusterfuck of a situation that she'd stumbled into.

Jesus fuck this was turning into a mess. Far too many people were here, and the area was far to small for her liking. If any of the newcomers had a gun, then this entire building could become a bloodbath very quickly. The logical solution was to get the fuck out of this place, and fast.

She slid the sword into one of the belt-loops that she never used for belts, jumped over the growing puddle of regurgitated... Whatever, she wasn't too keen on looking twice at it, pushed past the crying girl and the new one with out saying a word, and as soon as she was out the door she sprinted as fast as she could away from the situation.

Ok, that... That was not the effect of any asthma she knew. She turned to the boy, Noah was his name she recalled. They had known of each other, but never really progressed past the acquaintance stage.the kind of person you nodded to in the corridor, maybe said 'Hey' to occasionally.

And the weapon had a sawblade in it. Judging by the gouge in the wall, it could launch it somehow, and she really didn't want to be on the receiving end of a flying sawblade. "Maybe, we should all put the weapons down..." Her voice jumped a bit, despite her trying to keep it level, "Starting with sawblade-catapult-whachimajigger over there..."

If he put that down, then she could go and help the girl. As it was, she took a step back to prevent the puddle of vomit pooling over her shoes, which would probably make her hurl to be honest. "Keep it together Maria, keep it together..."

Well, no flying bits of metal was coming at her, so she assumed that she was in the clear for now. It had taken her all of three seconds to realise that her sword had basically no point though, so she kept it low, whilst still being in a position to do something.

She stepped into the room, eyeing up the boy I front of her. Blonde, tall, probably a good six or so feet, and looked utterly overdressed for a science trip in an azure dress shirt. The weapon he was holding looked very strange, almost like a grooved hockey stick, but thinner and looked to be even more ridiculously useless for throwing things. Unless of course it had some hidden advantage that she was unable to discern, she should be fine.

To give credit where it was due though, she agreed with his sentiments. Both of the leaving without blood spilt, or hell, working together to make sure that the immediate future wasn't full of both of their blood would be a marvellous thing. Although, judging by the red drips on the weapon, he had already lost a little bit of blood, so there you go.

Those cuts though... Sure, it could be an older cut, but since when did those bleed? The weapon looked blunt, no way to slice anyone, so where had he gotten those? Her eyes flitted around, the gouge in the wall becoming obvious. Visibly scared, she raised up and sword and held it across her chest, hoping that whatever it was that thing could to, it would give her a change to either run or attack.

Maybe both.

Just as this thought had appeared in her head, she heard a scream. Jumping backwards, she became aware of another girl who had managed to approach unseen. "Fuck, fuck fucking shit fuck!" She screamed. Sure, it wasn't the most verbose thing to say, but there was few situations in which a stream of expletives didn't make some kind of impact.

She backed off, so that both of them were cleartly visible to her. The boy worried her, the gouge and the weapon worried her more. The girl currently coughing her lungs out worried her slightly less however, so she stayed put. With any luck it was asthma or something and she'd be fine after a few deep breaths.

"Ok, maybe we should... Calm down?" The words came out at a squeak, much higher than she'd thought her voice had ever had the capacity to reach, let alone say entire sentences in. Her hands were shaking, her heart was pounding, and she was very, very close to doing something she might regret. Gritting her teeth to seem a bit more in control, she followed up with a "please!?"

Not likely to be dismemberment then, which was always good. She vaugley rcognised the voice, and she came to the split des ion that, for now, having another pair of eyes would be a good idea. she banged the hilt of the sword against the wall separating them, and called out "Hey! Coming in, don't... Do whatever it is your thing can do, aight?"

Judging by the cursing, the clattering and the loud noises that did not sound like gunshots, it sounded like the weapon he had was pretty damn complicated, or he was just a moron. Pushing open the door, he gave a soft knock before giving it a weak push from the side. If he tried to get the jump on her he'd have wasted the chance, and she would be in the defensive position.

Fingers crossed the first person she met wouldn't take a potshot at her to lower the competition.

The odds, he thought, of bumping into one specific person on an entire island, with probably a hundred other people was very small indeed. So to find the one person he was looking for almost immediately after deciding to find them was such a minuscule chance that he wondered it'd Danya was fucking with them, toying with them for some bizarre reason.

The numbness that had spread over him seemed to fade a little as he saw her red hair and heard her voice. Sure, it was a quiet whimper that gutted him, but it was her voice, and that was defiantley something. He shuffled over next to her and sat down, the first tears threatening to claw themselves out from his eyes to splash onto the soft carpet.

"If you're the kind of girl that hates seeing men cry, then I'm sorry, and you should probably look away." His voice sounded strange, as if it was more distant. Quieter, almost meeker. Like his body was strangling itself as it realised his situation.

There could only be one winner, and that winner had to have killed someone. Either he or Rea was going to have to die in this island, the other scarred and a murderer. So, he thought, maybe crying wasn't such a bad idea.

Will's hand was on the door handle, feet hovering over the shag carpet. He had to find a proper weapon somewhere, because he had gotten fucked over with the weapons. All he had gotten was a packet of cable ties, which currently were scattered outside, the window having been the preferred method of ditching them. A few were in his pocket, but the rest were the domain of whoever stumbled across them.

He appeared to be in an office area. A corridor lead down, with name inscribed on each door. The rooms all seemed to be identical in construction, two separate rooms with one having a desk and what you'd normally expect from an office building, and the other having a bed, for whatever bizarre reason.

He rubbed his neck, the metal collar that had been wrapped around it had dug into the back of his head, which was what he had mistaken for a crick when he had first awoken. Carefully, he walked along, occasionally opening a door and peering inside; perhaps a staff member was a fan of lethal weaponry, or maybe someone was inside. He didn't know what morbid curiosity drove him checking on.

Finally, he was about to open the flast door, when he became aware of a sobbing noise. He would put money on the fact that this voice wasn't the only one bawling like a child, and whilst part of him felt that joining them, he knew the tears wouldn't come.

Not because he was a sociopath, or unable to feel emotion, no, he wouldn't be able to cry because the most incredible sense of numbness had spread across him, and he was having a hard time thinking anything other than 'step forwards,' over and over again in his head.

He gently pushed the door open, hearing the faint creak as the un-oiled hinges swung inwards. There were two large bookshelves flanking the desk, and a small pot of random junk that had been abandoned whenever this facility had been deemed no longer needed. The pot was made from some kind of ceramic, so he gently smashed it open and picked up a shard. It wasn't much, especially if somebody had a gun, but it was all he was going to have for now.

Will's first thought upon waking up was the massive crick in his neck.

His second thought was how he was not going to die.

Although it has been shocking to him, his teacher's life being ended litterally in front of his eyes, his jacket sporting a light spread of almost rust-coloured blood, the actual, physical act hadn't been as bad for him. He had, after all, has blood cover his jacket before, and indeed he had seen the effect a bullet could have on a living being.

But it was horrifyingly different to watch a fellow human's brains being blown out than it was to see a prairie dog crumpling. To see someone's life being snuffed out, see the light fade from their eyes as it flickered back from sleep, and then to be told he'd need to see it over and over and over lest he suffer the same fate? It was sick. And as he looked at the B037 marking his rucksack, it truly hit him.

He, he considered, was probably some kind of favourite. He was strong, had firearms experience, and had shown an interest in joining the armed forces. Maybe some goons had him market down as a potential victor.

However it wasn't merely him. It was also about Rea. She was a nyctophobe, frail as a china vase, and as athletic as a fat kid with asthma. He needed to protect her, because otherwise she was dead, for sure.

In fact, some small part of his brain thought, what's too say you'll never see her again? That already she's bleeding out in a ditch, or dead. That the first girl he truly opened up to, had taken her virginity and shielded her from a million minor things, was already being mourned by her parents?

But that was the defeatism talking, and defeatism was a slow and insidious killer. He would find her.